Learning-by-Doing Safety and Maintenance Practices: A Pilot Course

This paper presents an educational approach for teaching Industry 4.0 concepts to maintenance and safety operators involved in industrial processes. A Learning-by-doing approach was introduced to assess the impact of learning by doing and knowledge sharing on designing maintenance and safety solutions based on Industry 4.0 concepts to build experience and improve decision-making skills. To this end, we proposed a pilot course to train industrial operators in the field of new technologies so that they could continue their work effectively. Specifically, the development of the course began with a needs assessment of the perspective participants, followed by an outline of the objectives and course structure. The course was adapted to the different educational and technical backgrounds of the participants (i.e., experienced operators who were digital immigrants and non-experienced operators who were digital natives). The results of the course were assessed through a survey, which allowed us to evaluate the operators’ perception of the learning approach and the contribution to improving the operators’ competencies and abilities. The results highlighted that the educational approach facilitated the teaching of maintenance and safety principles, promoting operators’ attention and participation. The difference in the learning level that we observed between the younger and older operators was also highlighted by the survey results. A dichotomy was revealed between the younger operators, who showed a greater understanding of the explained technologies, and the older operators, who required longer learning times. In this way, both types of participant could benefit from mutual collaboration and teamwork to improve their respective weaknesses.